


A Happy Middle

by Alcyone



Category: Perfect Match (Visual Novel)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-15
Updated: 2018-11-15
Packaged: 2019-08-24 05:22:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16633754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alcyone/pseuds/Alcyone
Summary: This is how a relationship ends.





	A Happy Middle

When Damien thought of Alana it was of her bent back as she crouched on the ground, her long brown hair pulled into a hasty ponytail, clumps of dirt streaking across her knuckles and darkening her fingers as she lowered a bulb into the hole she had dug in the damp earth.

* * *

Damien had grown up grappling with four sisters for everything from their mother’s attention to use of the phone to the last slice of pizza to his own pillow and blankets on the nights when Carina or Isabela stole into his room crying about nightmares.

None of it prepared him for Alana.

She wasn’t only good; she made it seem perfectly natural. Whether that was charming details out of a mark, shooting target after target at the range or wrestling a man twice her size and three times her weight to the ground, Alana performed everything with an ease Damien often envied. He was good, definitely. It wasn’t arrogance as much as fact. But whereas he had to climb to reach the position he had, Alana seemed born to it.

“That’s not even fair,” he complained good-naturedly one night over drinks as she retold the story of how she passed her defensive driving classes.

Alana threw her hair over one shoulder and settled her chin on her hand, smirking broadly at him.

“Green’s not a good color on you, Nazario,” she teased.

He pushed her shoulder. She caught his wrist. Their fingers somehow found each other.

She was like gravity: falling was inevitable.

Their days settled into a routine. Chasing leads, interrogating suspects and in the hours in between clinging to one another. Often a game, always a new challenge. Strange, perhaps, to another’s eyes, but it worked for them.

As the hunt began to near its end—as the walls closed around their target as much as around them—they stole moments. Moments of electrifying sensation, of nails and teeth, of a near violent need and a single-minded desperation. Moments of pressing together as if they could somehow meld together, as if the other’s presence alone could keep them from unraveling.

Damien lay on his stomach, attempting to regain control over his limbs. Alana draped her body over his, her warmth almost painful on his oversensitive skin. Finding her hand, he laced his fingers through hers and sighed. She carded his sweat-damp hair.

“Tomorrow, we finally close this chapter.”

Damien kissed each of her fingertips. 

The next night, gunshots shattered the stillness in Beitan.

* * *

They moved into a house on the city outskirts. For the first few weeks, Damien could not tolerate being around others. He came to detest the expressions of sympathy aimed his way. If not for Alana correctly interpreting what he was about to do and grabbing his wrist, he would have punched out a superior who reassured him _You made the right call_.

In one of their first sessions, his therapist asked him to number how much he blamed himself.

“One hundred percent,” he had answered without hesitation, his chest feeling like it was about to cave in. Even as he attended the sessions regularly and his rage and his fear inched downward, that one hundred percent was immutable.

Damien lost count of how many times he woke bathed in a cold sweat. Once awake, however, the nightmares would linger. He replayed Beitan in sensations: the sharp drop of shock; the punch in the gut of horror; the guilt that wrapped bony fingers around his throat and squeezed and squeezed.

On the nights he could be convinced to sleep in their bed, he took to stumbling away from the room. He rationalized it as not wanting to disturb Alana. At least one of them should still be able to sleep. 

In truth, he couldn’t bear to let her see how far the fractures extended.

One night found him outside nursing a bottle of Don Q Alana had surprised him with, letting the cool air wash over his face. He had been saving the bottle to celebrate closing the case. Now he was using it to erase his memories, erase his feelings.

Maybe if he were lucky he would erase himself. 

Out the corner of his eye, he caught the opening of the door and her near-silent approach. Alana sat near him without a word, her hands in her lap. When Damien finally braved to look at her, he found no sympathy, no pity in her expression. Only a sorrow he recognized because he, too, carried it with him.

“I remember it too,” was the only thing she said.

He did not answer her, and she did not speak again. Alana stayed with him while he pressed a hand to his eyes and tried to stop his shoulders from shaking. Come morning, she did not comment on what had happened.

He was never able to find the way to thank her.

* * *

Slowly, they crafted a new normal. 

The nightmares still came. Nor was reliving restricted to the times he slept. Often, Damien would lock himself in the bedroom or bathroom, his hands shaking, and wait it out. Other times, he had to stop and remind himself where he was, what he was doing. 

Most of all, he hated how he no longer recognized himself: not the man he was or the man he had been. The one he had been felt a stranger to him; he despised the one he had become.

Alana became his only solace. He came to depend on her to a degree even he recognized as unhealthy. But he no longer trusted himself, and he trusted no one else but her.

The routine helped. They attended their sessions. They checked in with their supervisors. They picked up different hobbies. Damien took to experimenting in the kitchen. He surprised Alana one day with a fusion meal inspired by the foods they had each grown up with. She criticized his chicken, but she ate everything and flicked a piece of ice at him when he pointed that out.

Another day, he returned to find Alana kneeling on the lawn.

“What are you doing?”

Coming closer, Damien could see the answer: she had ripped open a packet of seeds and was spreading them in the freshly dug up earth.

“There’s only so many ways I can rearrange the furniture.” 

She covered the holes and watered them before getting to her feet. She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. 

“I noticed these last time I went grocery shopping. Figured as long as we’re here I’d fix up the lawn. Plant something for a change.”

It was the first time she referred to anything involving the house with any sort of permanence. She was eager to get back to work, he knew. She enjoyed the travel. She enjoyed the thrill. (In another life, he had too.)

Neither had been cleared yet for field work. There was still a part of him that was loath at the thought of returning. _It’ll get easier with time_ , Alana told him the only time he had described the feeling to her. He did not mention how his skin crawled at the thought. He was ashamed to: it felt too much like admitting something in him broke—or that he did.

He never understood why she stayed. Through the worst and the less bad, she remained: providing a distraction where he needed one; giving him space when he couldn’t tolerate anyone near; partnering with him as they worked through bottle after bottle as if they could find a reset button at the bottom.

Neither spoke of the future. Damien barely existed some days in the present.

This was something new. As she took him through her plans—a few flowers, some evergreen shrubs for privacy—he let himself settle into the feeling.

And because it was Alana he never doubted it.

* * *

The break came with a question.

“What time’s your appointment today?”

“Don’t have one,” Alana called back from the bathroom. She wore a pair of black boyshorts and nothing else, studying her reflection in the mirror as she aimed the blow dryer at her hair.

“Did you change it?” he asked after she shut off the hair dryer and began passing a brush through her hair.

“No.” She caught his eye in the mirror. “I’m seeing her every two months now.”

Her tone was of _I told you_. Damien shook his head.

“I didn’t know.”

“We’re just doing follow-ups,” she explained. “I’m officially graduated. Even had the option of a diploma.” 

She strode into the bedroom, pulling a long-sleeved grey shirt that Damien knew from experience was as soft as sin over her head. Alana came to a stop before him, eyebrows raised. It was only then that Damien realized he hadn’t said anything.

“Right,” he scrambled, clearing his throat. “I’m glad. I am.”

She let him reach for her and pull her close. Tipping her head back, she met his eyes.

“You can’t start comparing.”

“I’m not.” 

“You _are_.”

“Okay, I am. Can you blame me?” 

Dropping his arms, he strode away from her. He glared out the window.

After almost a year, two modes of therapy, and a handful of pills he had poured down the drain, he felt stuck.

Damien had expected some level of recovery. Instead, he still had trouble sleeping. He felt as shitty as ever. Just the other night he had awoken to find Alana watching him. “You said her name again,” she had informed him. And the very thought of returning filled him with dread. He tried to visualize himself in the field again and had to stop when a shudder forced its way down his spine. He couldn’t do it, he couldn’t do it.

Eyes closed, Damien tipped his face up to the ceiling.

He couldn’t do it.

They fought that night.

She told him to stop being ridiculous, if he still needed more time that was nothing to be ashamed about. He snapped back that he didn’t need more time; what he needed was to leave. The more resistant she showed herself to the idea, the angrier he became until he finally yelled at her that she had no idea what he was feeling.

It was the first time he saw her completely lose her temper.

“You don’t think this is hard for me too? I was there, Damien!” She threw her arm out away from her. “I regret it. I wish it hadn’t happened. But there was no way we could have known what would happen.”

Damien pushed himself away with a noise of disgust. A sharp tug brought him around. Alana’s fist was wrapped around his sleeve. Anger, and something else, sharpened her features.

“You blame yourself, but it was _our_ case. _We_ worked it together. _Our_ leads took us there. If you’re to blame, then I am too.”

“You didn’t make the call,” he argued.

“You followed protocol.”

“I killed a little girl.”

_If you were to give it a number, how much would you say you blame yourself?_

“I killed her, Alana,” he said, swallowing past the lump in his throat. “One hundred percent, that one’s on me. I can’t forget that. I don’t _want_ to.”

Alana shook her head. “Damien—”

“Let’s just leave.” He again stepped closer and took her hands in his. “We’ll start over somewhere else. We’ll do something else.”

She had been his constant.

He never imagined she would say no.

* * *

Everything he owned fit into one suitcase. Months of travel had ensured he would pack light. Even if it hadn’t, he would still have left most of his things to Alana.

His passport and ticket were in his pocket. His key he dropped on the table for her to find later. She had been outside the entire time he was getting ready. She hadn’t spoken much at all, actually, since he made his retirement official. To be honest, neither had he.

As he tossed the suitcase into the car, Damien looked over to find Alana crouched on the ground near her plants. Beautiful green stems had broken through the earth. The faster-growing already had bulbs. He had been hoping to see them flower. 

He had been hoping for a lot of things.

His last memory of Alana as he pulled the car out was of her bent back, her long brown hair brushing her neck in a ponytail, lowering a bulb into the dark earth.

A part of him hoped she would turn around as it continued to hope that she might change her mind.

When the plane began to roll away from the terminal, he still expected to turn his head and find her.

* * *

Lying together on the bed the night before Beitan, Alana pressed a kiss to the back of his neck.

“Tomorrow, we finally close this chapter.”

Damien kissed each of her fingertips before shifting under her so that he was facing her, Alana still half-draped over him.

“And then what?”

“And then,” she said lacing her fingers through his and bracing their arms above his head, “I guess I find myself a new partner.”

Damien grinned.

“You’re going to trust someone new? _You?_ ”

She flashed him a playful smirk.

“I guess you’re right. I’ve put too much effort into this one already.”

He abruptly brought their arms down and rolled them over so he was pinning her down on the bed. Her hair streamed across the pillow. The sound of her laughter mingled with his.


End file.
